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Swimming by Nicola Keegan
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Swimming (edition 2009)

by Nicola Keegan

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2239120,005 (3.4)8
This is the story of a teenage girl's journey from a small Midwestern swim team to her first state meet, her brutal professional training, and the final, record-breaking swims that lead to her dizzying ascent to the Olympic podium in Barcelona. It's the story of a girl who discovers, in the loneliness of adolescence, in the family tragedies that threaten to engulf her, the resilience of the human spirit and the spectacular power of her own body.--From publisher description.… (more)
Member:rachaelevelyn
Title:Swimming
Authors:Nicola Keegan
Info:Knopf (2009), Hardcover, 320 pages
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Swimming by Nicola Keegan

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Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
Adult fiction. The narrative dawdles and skips and speaks in thought fragments. I got 50 or so pages in and decided that I didn't want to follow the story anymore, despite likeable and realistic characters. ( )
  reader1009 | Jul 3, 2021 |
Full disclosure: I picked up Swimming because I do, in fact, love swimming. To me, it has always been one of the most enjoyable activities, a way to fly and to move, a place where having broad shoulders is actually helpful.

As a child, I never considered it to be a "real" sport (probably because it's only taken seriously every few years when a Janet Evans or a Michael Phelps does their thing), but I did like those medals from local swim meets. I am constantly amazed when I meet people who either don't know or don't like to swim.

Luckily, even for those who were not water babies, Swimming is a powerful look at family, grief and how one survives. Philomena Ash, the middle of four girls, is always a gifted swimmer, but living a relatively normal life in Kansas flanked by nuns. As tragedies hit the Ash family, the tall and unwieldly Philomena finds escape in swimming and ascends to the top of the Olympic pool, so to speak, cheered on by the ghosts of dead relatives. Since the novel is told entirely through Philomena's eyes - even the quotes are in Italics, and thoughts are reflected through peoples' eyes - you are always on her side, especially when dealing with her agoraphobic mother who is a direct descendent of Charlotte in The Little Friend.

It would have been easy for Keegan to make her debut your standard triumph-of-the-human-spirit story, with the Olympic medal podium as the pinnacle of Phil's life. Keegan's writing is clear and often quite funny when Phil is describing her thoughts about, for example, her coach. "Olympic drama is starting to excavate sleeping Catholic ceremonial practices planted in my mind long before I could think, and I now have to fight the urge to bow or genuflect with the Mankovitz speaks. He looks at me and nods and I have to restrain myself in order not to genulfect or cross myself in response," she writes. But after Phil's athletic career is over, Keegan allows her the last chunk of the novel to figure out where her life is headed. Phil's epiphany - that feelings don't actually kill - seems simple, but is quite powerful.

This would be a great choice for a book club, and I suspect that most people who enjoy good writing with strong female heroines, from Speak: 10th Anniversary Edition to Little Bee: A Novel would enjoy it. And for younger readers who like female swimming protagonists, I remember loving In Lane Three, Alex Archer , which is about a teenage swimmer who dreams of the Olympics. I plan on seeing if I can hunt it down, as it's now out of print. ( )
2 vote ElizabethsBooks | Jun 24, 2011 |
Loved this book until the last 20 or so pages. Pip's inner voice was amazing and the depth of the family's dysfunction was riveting. You knew that it would end painfully, all that time in the pool prevented (sometimes on purpose) Pip from confronting her "ghosts" and when she finally did the whole novel sank in her despair. Still and all, a great book mainly because of the excellent writing. ( )
  Coyote99 | Jan 16, 2010 |
Slightly melodramatic but a very good story of about a family. Interesting back story re swimming for the Olympics. Good read but then I enjoy stories about dysfunctional families.
  shazjhb | Oct 29, 2009 |
A portrait of a character who must do what she must do...didn't like the ending, which fell flat. ( )
  TheLoisLevel | Aug 12, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
Nicola Keegan possesses an exhilarating mix of talent and mastery. Her sparkling first novel, Swimming, narrated by a precocious young woman born to be an Olympic swimmer, has loads of dramatic tension, a fresh narrative voice and subject matter just aching to be explored.
 
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For my mother, Kay Keegan, and my fathers, Reuben George Keegan and Joseph O'Mahoney
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I'm a problematic infant but everything seems okay to me.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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This is the story of a teenage girl's journey from a small Midwestern swim team to her first state meet, her brutal professional training, and the final, record-breaking swims that lead to her dizzying ascent to the Olympic podium in Barcelona. It's the story of a girl who discovers, in the loneliness of adolescence, in the family tragedies that threaten to engulf her, the resilience of the human spirit and the spectacular power of her own body.--From publisher description.

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